TODTGELICHTER is very special: you can’t really count the band from Hamburg as black metal, because a comparison with all those brutal, rough, straight forward pushing bands would be wrong. But “Rooms” is a slower album; the music is complex and touching like Long Distance Calling. And Marta isn’t the typical black metal singer. She varies between screams and clean vocals which is a great contrast because of her low pitch.

If you listen to the first song ‘Ghost’, you step into a new world. The atmosphere built up by the music sucks you in and if you let it, it will carry you onto a trip into new hemispheres of your brain, so to speak. TODTGELICHTER manage to keep this atmosphere during the whole album even though they switch from English to German and back – something they have been doing since I know the band – both fit their music pretty well.

Before dashing into the really dark song ‘Shinigami’ – an emotional rollercoaster of dark thoughts – there is an organ play named ‘Lost’ leading into the next song. But somehow this doesn’t feel like a break. As I said: the whole album is a journey. With ‘Shinigami’, the speed raises and the sound becomes harsher just to fall back into that dark state of mind. With the Japanese name of the angel of death, TODTGELICHTER found the perfect name for this song.

A proof that the band isn’t bound to any limitations on “Rooms” is ‘Necromant’, almost an electronic song but still dark and heavy. In ‘4JK’, we can hear another facet of Marta’s vocals with softer sung parts and higher notes. The song itself is faster, but not less atmospheric. It was the best choice the band could have made taking Marta as the lead vocalist after she was responsible for the female vocals only before. She definetly doesn’t have to hide her screams.

But enough talk about the vocals. As any other metal band, TODTGELICHTER lives from it’s guitars. And besides the vocals, they give “Rooms” its versatility and complexity. There are fast, shredding riffs, rhythms and from time to time, the guitars stand back just to bring up a special atmosphere (I know I’m using this word a lot while talking about “Rooms”, but that’s just what it is: a very atmospheric album!).

“Rooms” ends with a rather short song named ‘Pacific’ which isn’t acually kicking you back into reality. It leaves you caught deep inside your thoughts feeling kind of numb but also cleared from thoughts about things that don’t really matter. The album brings you back to focus on yourself and how your actions can effect your environment – like Gojira manage to do with their music but in a less ecological way.

So listen to the new TODTGELICHTER album and enjoy the chance to discover a new part of yourself, because this music really stimulates your brain.